random posts

Sunday, 29 January 2017

Though not as instantly fraught with dismay and foreboding as his other pronouncements of royal prerogative including the border wall with Mexico, the immigration ban for some Muslims and eviscerating healthcare for millions with no clear plan to replace it, Dear Leader has also charged the federal government with tightening up its cyber operations and identifying principle adversaries—which smacks as ironic since his own putative Russian dossier emerged and the dossiers of millions of swamp-crittersare with China for safe-keeping and they’re not paying for that firewall either.The other executive order is more contentious and drawing less attention but could eventually herald a massive change in the makeup and wealth of institutional knowledge and mission-readiness in the government: a civilian hiring freeze. Far from nimble and as efficient as possible, the bureaucracy of the executive branch, which includes the president’s armies, ambassadors and spies, is a measure of protection from rash or vaguely worded decisions. What do you think? Despite perceptions of expansion and redundancy, the American federal workforce has remained at about two million since the end of World War II. The scope and timbre of changing missions has been accentuated with government contractors and soldiers-of-fortune that are far more costly in the long run than those under its employ directly. What do you think? Supposedly after the hiring freeze expires, the Office of Personnel Management will have a clear and sober picture of how to proceed in eliminating positions by not filing vacancies after incumbents depart. Of course these decisions are not without broader consequences in terms of delivering the services that the government is still obliged to provide—especially considering that some of biggest welfare benefactors on both ends of the spectrum that were among Dear Leader’s support-base were those in red states that relied on government support and those corporate entities guaranteed government handouts and concessions that maximised their profit-margins. These ordered reassessments also come at a time when the government of the people has been working without a budget for over a decade, making it hard to project future privations. Perhaps that fiduciary guidance ought to have come first.